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PROLOGUE
Asteroid
Beneath my feet the ship hummed and purred. A little shimmy that the standard mating voyage ships didn’t have. After all the time we’d been aboard, it still tickled at the back of my head, the sound just different enough to grate. Even the stars moving past the viewports moved in a new way, not that I was actually looking outside. These viewports were custom-made screens, so clear you could’ve sworn you were looking at the real thing. Everything about the vessel was new, shiny and on a scale normally reserved for personnel carriers. Warships. But the Dragontooth wasn’t a warship. It was a mating vessel, the largest ever commissioned by the Drakonis Council.
“Your thoughts are wandering, lover,” Quasar teased, rolling onto his back and giving me an unobscured view of everything he had to offer. “Do I need to come over there and remind you of your mission?”
“Which one?” I asked, dipping my paint brush in a small pot of azure pigment and carefully tapping off the extra. “We are only at the edge of Sol’s system.” I touched the brush to my canvas, smudging the color along the lines that my mate had abandoned. “Lay back down, you’re ruining my vision.” I raised a brow over the top of my painting at him, smirking as he huffed dramatically and flounced back onto the bed. “I can always call Radon in here.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” my mate growled, propping himself back up on his elbows. The movement created beautiful lines and shadows in each curve and dip of his body, his cock thickening against his thigh, even though it had been less than half an hour since we had indulged in each other. Sweat was still drying on my skin, but I wanted to abandon my work and crawl back onto the bed with him. Perhaps we could manage another round before we were called to the bridge? “He won't sit as nicely as me.”
“You are not wrong.” I hummed, eyeing my muse as I carved out the shadows with my brush. “He can’t sit still. I only paint him from captured images.” Biting my lip, I mixed a little onyx with the azure to deepen the tone. “I could bring you both in here.”
“More fun with three,” Quasar laughed, blowing me a cheeky kiss. “It is poetry to watch him take you apart with just his lips on your cock.”
“Poetry indeed.” I sighed when the ship rattled, causing me to smear my pigment. “Damnit. Fucking ship. All that pomp and nothing works right.”
“It's the first of its kind, Asteroid,” my mate reminded me, smoothing out the sheets around him. “Also, it’s been made to be taken apart on arrival. Everything we might need to establish a home on Earth all stuck together with a bit of Drakon ingenuity.”
“A little too easily taken apart, in my opinion,” I muttered, as I removed the excess paint from the canvas. My vision was not coming to the page the way I wanted it to, so my usually relaxing pastime was only frustrating me more.
I was off duty and we only had a few more hours before we touched down on the tiny blue planet. Zinc had banished me from the deck, telling me to fuck off and relax. I’d done my best to obey my Captain’s dry command. Take my pleasure with one of my mates, then paint as a form of meditation. Instead, the groaning and swaying of the ship had disturbed me at every turn, causing my anxiety to kick up.
The moment we crossed the orbit of the furthest planet in the Sol system, we were on our own. Just us and the Thunder that was already on the ground.
After much deliberation, the esteemed Draconian Council had concluded that Earth was too dangerous a planet for our people’s usual approach of smaller, successive mating voyages. The pompous asshats had also warned us that if the mission went belly up–and they clearly expected it to–there would be no rescue mission. Instead three Thunders were shoved onto a barely above experimental ship–along with any and all magitech, weapons and support crew that we might need–to settle on Earth, form a new and rather experimental colony of Drakons, while we sought out and hopefully won over our fated mates. Oh, all while defending ourselves from an aggressive sect of witches known as the Drakon Hunters who’d apparently made it their life’s mission to eradicate us from the face of the planet.
In short, Zinc and I whole-heartedly agreed that this voyage was bound to be shit show.
One we were determined to see through for the betterment of Drakons everywhere.
Besides, our own stars had pointed us squarely at Earth. If we wanted a chance to secure our planet-bound fated mates, we needed to make this mission a success.
My natural concern over making first contact and securing a safe landing for my people was warring with all the happy anticipation bubbling inside at the thought of finally finding our fourth. We were lucky, after all, that our mission had been approved before any of us had started to suffer from the effects of an unfinished bond. Not everyone got that lucky. Argon, my old friend, had taken his Thunder and stolen a ship. An outlandish call driven by the mating sickness so thick in his blood it had threatened to destroy him and his entire Thunder from the inside out.
Thank the stars, their risk had paid off. The brave actions of his Thunder allowed us to follow without also being deemed outcasts and rebels by our kind.
“Asteroid,” Quasar whistled from the bed. “We’ll be called to the bridge any time.”
“I know.” Dropping my brush in a cup of cleaner, I stood. Arching my back to relieve some of the tension, I scratched my scales. “What do you think she’ll be like?”
“Perfect,” my mate hummed. “Isn’t that what we’re always told? Neutrino is always hemming and hawing about how amazing their human mate is. Piper this and Piper that. You’d think her pussy was lined with pure lalve berry nectar.”
“Don’t talk about lalva berries.”
I shoved my head into my closet and searched around for the pants that Flare had shoved at me a few days before. All part of our disguise. Blue pants he had called Jeans, and a vest made out of animal hide that he had insisted was called a Cut. Wanting to be prepared once we hit the surface, I’d studied my treatment for our cover carefully. Words and definitions swam around in my head as I pulled the pants on over my thighs, hopping a couple of times before my legs settled into them. The clasps were a departure from what I was used to, but when in Carthage, I guess. One hand protected my cock as the other pulled the zipper up with a huff of remembered mirth. I didn’t plan on making the same mistake Arsenic had. The button, at least, was much more familiar. There, ship shape, and ready for landing on a planet crawling with enemies.
A chime signaled the door before Radon came strolling through. His calm demeanor didn’t fool me. I could see from the clench of his fingers, the bite of his claws against the palm of his hand, that he was just as antsy as the rest of us. However, my mate was far too stoic to allow anyone to see it, not while he was on duty.
“We have passed the gas giant. Zinc wants you on the bridge.” He turned and eyed Quasar with a critical eye, then back over to me, where I was busy shoving my feet into the tough boots we had all been given. Grumbling, I stomped in them a time or two, trying to get a feel for the strange hide with their thick rubber soles and metallic caps. Radon allowed himself a brief smirk as appreciation glittered in his intelligent eyes. “You two are insatiable.”
“I wasn’t the one waking me up at a ludicrous hour of the morning, with a hard cock and an urgent need.” Quasar grinned, rolling on his back, palming his own cock. “But if you wanna quickie, I’m up.”
My incorrigible mate waggled his eyebrows salaciously at my stuffier mate, trying to get a rise out of him. Quasar had taken great pleasure in studying all he could about modern lingo and customs of our new home much to the amusement of Piper, one of the few living Earthlings residing on Drakonis. She often broke down into a fit of giggles whenever he tried his new-found parlance out on her.
“I can see that.” Radon turned to me, putting Quasar behind him. “Nothing we wind up doing to bring that cheeky mate of ours into line would ever be considered quick. Please dress before you come to the bridge this time.”
With that parting shot thrown at our now pouting mate and a nod to me, Radon took his leave, the door clicking shut behind him.
